Designing for Performance  

While there are many design elements that contribute to how a home will perform, the one most people understand the need to ensure that a home doesn’t overheat due to too much sun entering the building. It sounds simple but the requirement is to balance solar gain with enough natural light to reduce the need for artificial lighting. We achieve this through the use technology, using programs to calculate the impact of solar gain and to model light levels.

There is a need to take advantage of local conditions, utilising cooling breezes in summer while protecting against cold winds in winter. What might seem like simple decisions, such as where to position a building on a site, can have far reaching impacts on how a house performs. Finally, in designing how the home will be built, the architectural detailing has a big impact on the overall performance. A good understanding of thermal bridging is important to ensure that heat doesn’t get into or leak out of a home when it shouldn’t. (If your architect cannot explain thermal bridging and explain how they design to avoid them, please choose somebody else, even if it is not us).  Back